Post 1 of 5 in the Weaponized Verses Series: five Saturdays of Mental Health Awareness Month, five passages modern Christianity gets wrong.
“Don’t worry.”
“If God takes care of the lilies, He’ll take care of you.”
“If you really trusted God, you wouldn’t be anxious.”
“Anxiety is just a lack of faith.”
How many of us have heard phrases like this used, either in our communities or even in our own minds?
Here we are, struggling with anxiety, and we’re told to just have more faith? “Try not to worry.” Great, I’d love to if I could.
Weaponized Scripture is unfortunately very common, especially in faith spaces. We take Scripture out of context and then beat ourselves up for what we think it says.
This post isn’t a takedown of Scripture. Instead, it’s a takedown of how Scripture gets weaponized against people already suffering.
The Verdict I Gave Myself
I remember sitting in church when I was a kid. I was excited to go to “grown-up church” with my parents, and the pastor happened to be speaking on Matthew 6:25-34.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”
I read and reread, “do not worry about what you’ll eat or what you’ll wear” and absorbed it as a verdict. How many times had I sat in my closet trying to pick out the perfect outfit to wear to school?! I worried about what I was going to wear and jumped straight to the verdict that I must be sinning. I remember going home and trying not to worry, but then I couldn’t stop. I thought I was now sinning AND failing at not being anxious, which just brought more anxiety.
Looking back, I see that no one had to weaponize this passage against me. I did it all to myself, because of how I interpreted it. These verses have been weaponized for so long, used as lazy shorthand for so long, that the damage doesn’t even need a perpetrator anymore. We do it to ourselves.
The Damage Being Done
When we tell people that their anxiety is sin, we do nothing but add shame to their suffering.
Read that again.
This weaponization of this passage only compounds harm.
Think of those of us with clinical anxiety. We stop trusting our own emotional experience and dismiss it as sin. We sit in church and feel anxious during worship and wonder if God is mad at us for not being able to “just rest.” We might hide our struggles from the church because it “proves we’re faithless.” We might refuse medication, because it would mean we’re “not trusting God.”
And then we spiral even deeper because the very verse meant to comfort us has become the loudest accuser in our heads.
This is NOT what the Bible teaches.
This is something Christians have done with the Bible.
It’s Not the Bible—It’s Us
The problem here isn’t Scripture. The Bible isn’t the problem. The problem is how this gets handed to hurting people as a weapon instead of an invitation.
Instead of interpreting the whole passage, we take a slice of the Gospel and use it to minimize legitimate struggles and spread shame.
So, what does Matthew 6:25-34 actually say?
What Scripture Actually Says
Matthew 6:25-34 contains ten verses of context that almost no one quotes in full (Read it here). Let me show you what almost everyone misses.
Let’s take a look at verse 27: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Read that question again. Jesus isn’t condemning worry—He’s pointing out that it doesn’t work. Worrying about your test score doesn’t change your test score. Worrying about tomorrow’s bills doesn’t pay them. Worrying about whether you’ll be okay doesn’t make you okay.
Jesus is pointing out that worry is pointless, not sinful. There’s a massive difference between “stop doing this evil thing” and “this thing you’re doing isn’t getting you anywhere.”
One is a verdict. The other is wisdom.
Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Jesus acknowledges trouble exists. He’s not pretending like life is fine. He’s not denying that people struggle and suffer. Jesus is saying: don’t pile tomorrow’s troubles on top of today’s already-full plate.
This isn’t a command to be emotionless or to never worry again.
This is practical wisdom for an anxious mind.
The birds and the lilies aren’t telling you to stop having feelings. Instead, they show us the character of God. He sees, provides, and pays attention.
The whole passage is about WHO God is, not what’s wrong with YOU.
Anxiety Is Not Sin: Here’s What the Bible Shows
Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-38, Luke 22:44). The Bible describes Jesus as “sorrowful and troubled”, “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”, “sweat like drops of blood”.
The same Jesus who said “do not worry” experienced what we’d today call extreme anxiety.
If anxiety is sin, Jesus “sinned”. But Jesus never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). Therefore, experiencing anxiety is not, in itself, sin.
Hebrews 4:15 says Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He did not sin.” He felt what we feel. The feeling of anxiety itself isn’t a sin.
1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” This doesn’t tell us to just stop feeling anxious. It tells us what to do with it (easier said than done, I know).
That doesn’t mean worry can never lead to sin. It can, when it turns into control or idolatry or refusing to trust God. But the feeling of anxiety itself? Not a sin.
What This Passage Invites Us Into
If we look at Matthew 6:25-34 with this reframe, we see it’s a redirect, not a reprimand. It’s a revelation about the Father, that He sees, provides and pays attention. It’s not a guilty verdict on our faith. The passage invites us to bring our worry to God; it doesn’t demand us to stop being someone who worries.
And it gives us practical wisdom: don’t carry tomorrow’s burden today.
Literal mental health advice from Jesus.
Stop reading this passage as a verdict on your faith; having “more faith” doesn’t always solve all problems. We need to stop using it on ourselves as evidence we’re failing, too. And we need to stop letting other Christians wield it against people in a mental health crisis.
We can practice “do not worry” in this context AND take anti-anxiety medication. We can pray AND go to therapy. We can be a faithful Christian AND have an anxiety disorder.
These were never contradictions.
Permission to Worry AND Trust
I wish I could go back in time and talk to that little girl who thought worrying about what she’d wear made her a sinner. I’d tell her the full context of the passage: that worrying doesn’t matter since God will always take care of us. We are allowed to have anxiety AND faith (especially because she’d develop an anxiety disorder later in life).
With this reframe, we can read this passage as comforting, not condemning.
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
God always takes care of us, even when it doesn’t look the way we thought it would.
Next week, we’ll unravel “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, a ‘verse’ that’s actually a misquote. (Post 2 of 4 in the Mental Health Awareness Month: Weaponized Verses series.)
